Nearly a year after buying the world’s largest site, Pornhub’s parent company Aylo says it “regrets” illegal content in the past, but says adjustments have been made to prevent it from falling again.
Aylo admitted on December 21, 2023, that he profited from video traffic.
She has avoided a felony conviction by entering into a deferred prosecution agreement with the U. S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
The Montreal-based company had to pay $1. 8 million to the U. S. government from the transaction.
“Even though we have signed a deferred processing agreement, we are deeply sorry that criminals have abused our platform, that even though we were shown consent forms, as we later learned, they were met with fraud or coercion, we regret hosting this content and are doing what we want to do about it,” said Solomon Friedman, vice president of compliance at Ethical Capital Partners (ECP), the Ottawa-based personal equity firm that owns Aylo.
Friedman, who is also a criminal attorney, said the plea deal with U. S. prosecutors came about because they identified “Aylo’s commitment to addressing his compliance program and internal controls. “
Some of those controls were demonstrated at a virtual press conference this week at the company’s Montreal headquarters. Friedman and other executives explained how the company was turning the page on its turbulent history by commemorating the one-year anniversary of ECP’s acquisition of Aylo. formerly known as MindGeek.
The changes on Pornhub come with the verification of new video uploads.
The site was last updated on January 23, 2024, and now requires content creators to provide consent and identity documents to the site’s moderators for each individual appearing in a pornographic video before uploading it, something that was not done before.
“If we can’t determine the identity of the other people featured in the content, it may not be livestreamed to the public,” Friedman explained, adding that even for videos in which other people’s faces are seen, moderators still want to determine their identity.
The move aims to prevent the posting of child sexual abuse and non-consensual (CSAM) on Pornhub.
Another tool, in 2021, incentivizes users searching for CSAM-related terms to search for resources to satisfy their need to watch content that is illegal for minors.
A screenshot of the deterrence messages on Pornhub. (Source: Aylo)
The company said it was more “open” and “transparent” than before.
However, it hasn’t been fully revealed about its moderation teams, who should take a look at the huge catalog of videos it hosts.
The company recorded 6. 83 million video downloads in 2019 on Porhub, its flagship site. The company also runs several tube sites, such as YouPorn, RedTube, and xTube.
Defense attorneys Solomon Friedman speak to reporters outdoors at the Ottawa courthouse on Thursday, Feb. 23, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
Friedman said only that the company has more than 1,400 painters in Canada and that “20 percent of Aylo’s work is full-time in safety and security,” though not all of them work as moderators.
“We have enough moderators to make sure that each and every user is vetted and that any and all content is moderated. If we have less, it takes longer, if we have more, it will go faster,” he said, “but no content will be published unless it’s moderated. “
When asked via CTV News, Aylo provided the number of moderators he employs lately.
Website moderation has been at the center of controversies surrounding Pornhub in recent years, peaking last month when the federal privacy commissioner released a report on Aylo.
The report reveals that the company violated federal privacy law by allowing intimate photographs to be shared with knowledge or direct consent.
Commissioner Philippe Dufresne’s report follows a complaint by a woman who claimed that her ex-boyfriend had posted sexually particular videos of her on Aylo’s without her permission, which had “serious” consequences for the victim, “including social stigma, mental harm and monetary consequences. “”loss and even a suicide attempt,” according to the investigation.
Dufresne made several recommendations, adding that Aylo download “valid and meaningful consent” from the user that appears in the site’s content.
Friedman told reporters that “at this point, we believe we are fully compliant with the regulations, as well as the Privacy Commissioner’s recommendations. “
In recent months, Aylo has said he would block Canadians’ access to Porhub if a Senate bill becomes law.
Bill S-210, a law to limit young people’s online access to sexually particular material, passed the Senate last April and referred to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security in December.
Canadians would be required to determine their age in order to access a site.
The audit method proposed in the bill, as drafted recently, has raised some concerns among privacy experts.
The bill mentions the creation of a virtual identity formula or one capable of estimating an individual’s age based on a visual scan of their face, proposals that Aylo opposes.
“It’s absurd to ask other people to provide their identities to thousands, or even thousands, tens of thousands, or millions of adult sites in order to access content,” Friedman said. “The customers for identity theft, fraud and civil mistrust by users are simply huge. And we will not collect identifiable data from our users. So with respect to the S-210, you know, we hope the government is right. “
Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and research chair of Internet law and e-commerce from Canada, called it “the most damaging Canadian internet bill you’ve ever heard of. “
Arif Virani, Canada’s Minister of Justice and Attorney General, speaks at a press convention on Parliament Hill in Ottawa regarding the new bill on online harms, Monday, Feb. 26, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
Aylo prefers device age verification, for example on smartphone and computer operating systems, “which can save underage accounts from adult content without risking revealing sensitive user data. “
Most Liberal MPs oppose the Senate bill because it is running into its own bill on online harms, introduced last month.
“We believe that smart regulation is vital in this sector and there are some very smart first steps in this legislation,” Friedman said of the federal bill, emphasizing that “we are already complying with any and all measures in this law. “
Aylo said he supports the federal government’s bill and expects to testify before parliament to give his opinion.
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